The Comte (Count) de St. Germain what is an enigmatic figure in history who allegedly lived in 18th century France in the timeline of George Washington and other luminaries who were key to the American revolution. His year of birth varies between 1691 and 1712 - his death on February 27, 1784.
St. Germain has been variously described as an alchemist, courtier, adventurer, charlatan, inventor, pianist, violinist and amateur composer, but is best known as a recurring figure in the stories of several strands of occultism - particularly those connected to Theosophy and the White Eagle Lodge, where he is also referred to as Master Rakoczi or Master R and as one of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom. He is credited with near god-like powers and longevity.
St. Germain remains with us in one magical way or another. Alchemy has come to mean the transformation of consciousness set in “time” to its natural state of light, a process that is going on today. The adventures of St. Germain were as real or illusionary as one perceives them to be, for all of reality is nothing more than a consciousness hologram set in the illusion of time for experience.
St Germain was also known as 'Der Wundermann' or 'The Wonderman'. He was a man whose origin was unknown and who disappeared without leaving a trace.
'Der Wundermann' or 'The Wonderman' takes us to Friedrich Nietzsche and the concept of Ubermensch “Superman” or “Superhuman” linked to Zoroaster/Zarathustra which takes us to Thus Spoke Zarathustra (“Also Sprach Zarathustra”).
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick - the screenplay by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. It is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of space flight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous imagery. The soundtrack incorporates a number of pieces of classical music, among them “Also sprach Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss.
St. Germain is attributed to many roles in history including Jesus which in turn takes us to extraterrestrials and the Anunnaki
Some believe St. Germain was the same soul as the Egyptian God Thoth the progenitor of this experiment
Some sources believe St Germain's name is not familial, but was invented by him as a French version of the Latin Sanctus Germanus, meaning “Holy Brother.”
Since his death, various occult organizations have adopted him as a model figure or even as a powerful deity. In recent years several people have claimed to be the Count of St. Germain. (Note that St Germain was never regarded as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church - the “st.” before his name refers to his alleged home).
St. Germain never revealed his actual background and identity, leading to many speculations about him and his origin and ancestry. Some of these include the possibility that he was the son of Francis II Rakoczi, the Prince of Transylvania (who was in exile), or that he was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg, the widow of Charles II of Spain.
While he may have studied in Italy at Siena University, possibly as a protege of Grand Duke Gian Gastone (the last of the Medici line), St. Germain's first chronicled appearances were in London in 1743 and in Edinburgh in 1745, where he was apparently arrested for spying. He was released and soon acquired a reputation as a great violinist. He was ascetic and apparently celibate. During this time he met Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In 1746 he disappeared. Horace Walpole, who knew him from about 1745 in London, described him thus: “He sings, plays the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad and not very sensible”.
He reappeared in Versailles in 1758. He claimed to have had recipes for dyes and acquired quarters in the Chateau de Chambord. During this time in Paris he gave diamonds as gifts and reputedly hinted that he was centuries old. The old portrait of him dates from these years. He was an acquaintance of Louis XV and his mistress Madame de Pompadour. At the time a mime, Gower, began to mimic his mannerism in salons, joking that he would have advised Jesus.
In 1760 he left for England through Holland when the minister of State, Duke of Choiseul, tried to have him arrested.
After that the Count passed through the Netherlands into Russia and apparently was in St Petersburg when the Russian army put Catherine the Great on the throne. Later conspiracy theories credit him for causing it. The next year he turned up in Belgium, bought land and took the name Surmount. He tried to offer his processes - treatments of wood, leather, oil paint - to the state.
During his negotiations - that came to nothing - with Belgian minister Karl Cobenzl he hinted at a royal birth and turned iron into something resembling gold. He then disappeared for 11 years.
In 1774 he resurfaced, and apparently tried to present himself to a count in Bavaria as Freiherr Reinhard Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the count Tsarogy.
In 1776 the Count was in Germany, calling himself Count Welldone, and again offered recipes - cosmetics, wines, liqueurs, treatments of bone, paper and ivory. He alienated King Frederick's emissaries by his claims of transmutation of gold and reputedly compared himself to God. To Frederick he claimed to have been a Freemason. He settled in a house of Prince Karl of Hesse-Kassel, governor of Schleswig-Holstein and studied herbal remedies and chemistry to give to the poor. To him he claimed he was a Francis Rakoczy II, Prince of Transylvania.
1784 is when the Count supposedly died, probably of pneumonia. He left very little behind.
There were rumors of him alive in Paris in 1835, in Milan in 1867 and in Egypt during Napoleon's campaign. Napoleon III kept a dossier on him. Annie Besant said that she met the Count in 1896.
Theosophist C. W. Leadbeater claimed to have met him in Rome in 1926, and said that St. Germain showed him a robe that had been previously owned by a Roman Emperor and that St. Germain told him that one of his residences was a castle in Transylvania.
Theosophist Guy Ballard claimed that the Count had introduced him to visitors from Venus and published a book series about his channelings; Ballard founded the “I Am” Activity.
In January 28, 1972, ex-convict and lover of singing star Dalida, Richard Chanfray claimed to be the Count of St. Germain on French television. He also claimed that Louis XV was still alive.
There are several “authoritative” biographers who usually do not agree with one another. His ancestry is a matter of much speculation. Theosophists consider him to be an Ascended Master or adept. Aleister Crowley identified with him. Helena Blavatsky said he was one of her Masters of Wisdom and hinted at secret documents. Several books on palmistry and astrology have been published in his name.
During the centuries after his death, numerous myths, legends and speculations have surfaced. He has been attributed with occult practices like snake charming and ventriloquism. There are stories about an affair between him and Madame de Pompadour. Other legends report that he was immortal, the Wandering Jew, an alchemist with the elixir of life, a Rosicrucian or an ousted king, a bastard of Queen Anna Maria of Spain, that he prophesied the French Revolution. Casanova called him the violinist Catlini. Count Cagliostro was rumored to be his pupil. The fact that the name “St. Germain” was not exactly uncommon confuses the matters even more.
Many groups in occultism honor St. Germain as an Ascended Master. As such, he is believed to have many magical powers such as the ability to teleport, levitate, walk through walls, influence people telepathically, etc.
Some esoteric groups credit him with inspiring the Founding Fathers to draft the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.
Secret societies were the fashion in pre-revolutionary France, and some of them recognized Saint-Germain as an 'adept' one who knew the ancient wisdoms hinted at in the rites of the Freemasons, Rosicrucians and Knights Templars.
He influenced Freemasonry and related secret societies, though many modern masons have denied this and have even omitted to mention him as a great source of inspiration.
In Vienna he took part in the foundation of the Society of Asiatic Brothers and of the Knights of Light, who studied alchemy; and it was he who gave Mesmer his fundamental ideas on personal magnetism and hypnotism. It is said that he initiated Cagliostro, who visited him on several occasions in Holstein to receive directions from him, though there is no direct evidence for this. The two men were to be far separated from one another by opposite currents and a different fate.
All over the country secret societies sprang up. The new spirit manifested itself in the form of associations. Neither the nobility nor the clergy escaped what had become a fashion.
There were lodges for women, and the Princesse de Lamballe became grand mistress of one of them.
In Germany there were the Illuminati and the Knights of Strict Observance, and Frederick II, when he came to the throne, founded the sect of the Architects of Africa.
In France, the Order of the Templars was reconstituted, and Freemasonry, whose grand master was the Duke de Chartres, increased the number of its lodges in every town. Martinez de Pasqually taught his philosophy at Marseilles, Bordeaux and Toulouse; and Savalette de Lange, with mystics such as Court de Gebelin and Saint-Martin, founded the lodge of the Friends Assembled.
The initiates of these sects understood that they were the depositories of a heritage that they did not know, but whose boundless value they guessed; it was to be found somewhere, perhaps in traditions, perhaps in a book written by a master, perhaps in themselves. They spoke of this revealing word, this hidden treasure it was said to be in the hands of “unknown superiors of these sects, who would one day disclose the wealth which gives freedom and immortality.”
It was this immortality of the spirit that Saint-Germain tried to bring to a small group of chosen initiates. He believed that this minority, once it was developed itself, would, in its turn, help to develop another small number, and that a vast spiritual radiation would gradually descend, in beneficent waves, towards the more ignorant masses. It was a sage's dream, which was never to be realized.
With the co-operation of Savalette de Lange, who was the nominal head, he founded the group of Philalethes, or truth-lovers, which was recruited from the cream of the Friends Assembled. The Prince of Hesse, Condorcet, and Cagliostro were all members of this group. Saint-Germain expounded his philosophy at Ermenonville and in Paris, in the rue Platriere. It was a Platonic Christianity, which combined Swedenborg's visions with Martinez de Pasqually's theory of reintegration. There were to be found in it Plotinus' emanations and the hierarchy of successive planes described by Hermeticists and modem theosophists. He taught that man has in him infinite possibilities and that, from the practical point of view, he must strive unceasingly to free himself of matter in order to enter into communication with the world of higher intelligences.
He was understood by some. In two great successive assemblies, at which every Masonic lodge in France was represented, the Philalethes attempted the reform of Freemasonry. If they had attained their aim, if they had succeeded in directing the great force of Freemasonry by the prestige of their philosophy, which was sublime and disinterested, it may be that the course of events would have been altered, that the old dream of a world guided by philosopher-initiates would have been realized.
But matters were to turn out differently. Old causes, created by accumulated injustices had paved the way for terrible effects. These effects were in their turn to create the causes of future evil. The chain of evil, linked firmly together by men's egoism and hatred, was not to be broken. The light kindled by a few wise visionaries, a few faithful watchers over the well being of their brothers, was extinguished almost as soon as it was kindled.
Another account of Saint-Germain's life claims he was the natural son of the widow of Charles II of Spain and a certain Comte (Count) Adanero, whom she knew at Bayonne. This Spanish queen was Marie de Neubourg, whom Victor Hugo took as the heroine of his Ruy Blas. Those who disliked Saint-Germain said that he was the son of a Portuguese Jew named Aymar, while those who hated him said, in the effort to add to his discredit, that he was the son of an Alsatian Jew named Wolff.
Fairly recently a new genealogy of Saint-Germain has been put forward which seems the most probable of all. It is the work of the theosophists and Annie Besant, who has frequently made the statement that the Comte de Saint-Germain was one of the sons of Francis Racoczi II, Prince of Transylvania. The children of Francis Racoczi were brought up by the Emperor of Austria, but one of them was withdrawn from his guardianship.
Saint Germain never seemed to age. For an entire century he maintained the physical appearance of a man between forty and fifty years old.
He could do just about anything. He was almost too good to be true. He was a magician, a musician, artistry as a violinist, talent as a painter, skill in alchemy and chemistry, a seer who read for and socialized with the rich and famous, had great wealth, and was one of the most mysterious men on the Europe continent. He knew nearly all the European languages. His knowledge of history was comprehensive, and his accomplishments as a chemist, on which he based his reputation, were in many ways considerable.
By far the greatest obvious talents of the Comte de Saint-Germain were connected with his knowledge of alchemy. Yet if Saint-Germain he knew how to make gold, he was wise enough to say nothing about it. Nothing but the possession of this secret could perhaps account for the enormous wealth at his command, though he was not known to have money on deposit at any banks.
He was one of the of the most celebrated mystics and adventurers of modern times. He was a confidant of two kings of France, a dazzlingly rich and gifted social figure, the subject of a thousand rumors.
He enjoyed and sought the company of the pretty women of his day. It appears from the memoirs of Baron von Gleichen that when Saint-Germain was in Paris he became the lover of Mademoiselle Lambert, daughter of the Chevalier Lambert, who lived in the house in which he lodged. And it appears from Grosley's memoirs that in Holland he became the lover of a woman as rich and mysterious as himself.
Though he never ate any food in public, he liked dining out because of the people he met and the conversations he heard. They say he lived on oatmeal. He had an immense stock of amusing stories with which he regaled society.
He was an aristocrat who lived with princes and even with kings almost on a footing of an equal.
He gave recipes for removing wrinkles and dyeing hair.
His activity and the diversity of his occupations were very great. He was interested in the preparation of dyes and even started a factory in Germany for the manufacture of felt hats.
One of his principal roles was that of a secret agent in international politics in the service of France. He became Louis XV's confidential and intimate counselor and was entrusted by him with various secret missions.
He had a love of jewels in an extreme form, and he ostentatiously showed off those he possessed. He kept a great quantity of them in a casket, which he carried about everywhere with him. The importance he attached to jewels was so great that in the pictures painted by him, which were in themselves remarkable, the figures were covered with jewels; and his colors were so vivid and strange that faces looked pale and insignificant by contrast. Jewels cast their reflection on him and threw a distorting light on the whole of his life.
He was also known to carry jewels sewn into his clothing . He was said to have presented a cross ornamented with gems to a woman he scarcely knew, because she had idly admired it.
The count claimed that he had learned how to turn several small diamonds into one large one and to make pearls grow to spectacular size. He said he could remove flaws from diamonds. He could make a big diamond out of several small stones. The diamonds that he wore in his shoes and garters were believed to be worth more than 200,000 francs.
It was widely suspected that he also knew the secret for making gold out of base metal.
Tradition has related that he said he had known Jesus and been present at the Council of Nicea. But he did not go so far as this in his contempt for the men with whom he associated and in his derision of their credulity.
He seems to have become a celebrity in the 1750's as a friend of Louis XV and his mistress Madame de Pompadour, who together spent evenings with him simply for the pleasure of his conversation. Louis XV must have known who he was, for he extended to him a friendship that aroused the jealousy of his court. He allotted him rooms in the Chateau of Chambord. He shut himself up with Saint-Germain and Madam de Pompadour for whole evenings; and the pleasure he derived from his conversation and the admiration he no doubt felt for the range of his knowledge cannot explain the consideration, almost the deference, he had for him. Madam du Housset says in her memoirs that the king spoke of Saint-Germain as a personage of illustrious birth.
Count Charles of Hesse Cassel, with whom he lived during the last years in which history is able to follow his career, must also have possessed the secret of his birth. They worked with alchemy together. Saint-Germain treated him as an equal. It was to him that Saint-Germain entrusted his paper just before his supposed death in 1784.
However, neither Louis XV nor the Count of Hesse Cassel ever revealed anything about the birth of Saint-Germain. The count even went so far as invariably to withhold the smallest detail bearing on the life of his mysterious friend. This is a very remarkable fact, since Saint-Germain was an extremely well known figure.
Whether he was a genius or a charlatan, Saint-Germain had the talent to make himself noticed and the subject of gossip. But in Versailles and Paris he was embraced as the confidential adviser of Louis XV. The position earned him the envy and enmity of the king's ministers, who denounced him as an adventurer with a smooth line of talk.
Matters came to a head in 1760, when the count at the behest of the king involved himself in foreign affairs, going behind the back of ministry. Threatened with arrest, he was obliged to flee to England, where he stayed for a while; possibly for a period of two years.
From England Count Saint-Germain apparently went to Russia, where it is claimed he took part in a conspiracy that put Catherine the Great upon the throne in 1762.
After that nothing much is known of the count until 1774, when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette came to the throne. Saint-Germain then returned to France. It is said that he warned the royal couple of the revolution 15 years in the future, saying, “There will be a blood-thirsty republic, whose scepter will be the executioner's knife.”
New Age beliefs associated St. Germain with the color violet and the jewel amethyst; he is also regarded as the “Master of the Seventh (violet) Ray”.
According to Theosophy, the Seven Rays are seven metaphysical principles that govern both individual souls and the unfolding of each 2,158 year long Astrological Age. Since according to Theosophy the next Astrological Age, the Age of Aquarius, will be governed by the Seventh (violet) Ray (the Ray of Ceremonial Order), St. Germain is sometimes called “The Cosmic Master of the Age of Aquarius.”
In Rosicrucian Max Heindel's writings, the Count of St Germain (18th century) is described as one of the later incarnations of Christian Rosenkreuz, an enigmatic individual born in the 13th century and the Head of the Rosicrucian Order. According to this author, Rosenkreuz had been Lazarus in his previous previous physical life, a biblical character in the New Testament (this would contradict the idea that he was Joseph, since they both lived at the same time) and Hiram Abiff, the Widow's Son of Freemasonry, in an earlier existence.
In the 1925 book The Masters and the Path by C.W. Leadbeater, an adherent of Theosophy, St. Germain is called both the “Comte de St. Germain” and the “Master Rakoczi.” His previous incarnations are enumerated (the same ones as noted below in the paragraph about Guy Ballard). On page 240 of The Masters and the Path it is stated that when performing magical rituals in his castle in Transylvania, St. Germain wears “a suit of golden chain-mail which once belonged to a Roman Emperor; over it is thrown a magnificent cloak of crimson, with on its clasp a seven-pointed star in diamond and amethyst, and sometimes he wears a glorious robe of violet.”
In the Alice Bailey's books, St. Germain is also known as the “Master Rakoczi”. Alice A. Bailey's book The Externalisation of the Hierarchy (1934) gives the most information about his reputed role as an Ascended Master. His title is said to be the “Lord of Civilization”. He is said to telepathically influence people who are seen by him as being instrumental in bringing about the new civilization of the Age of Aquarius. It was said by Alice A. Bailey that “sometime after AD 2025” Jesus Christ, St. Germain, Kuthumi and the others in the Ascended Master hierarchy (except Gautama Buddha) would “externalisze” i.e., descend from the etheric plane, and live physically on Earth in ashrams surrounded by their disciples.
In the Godfre Ray King books, and Law of Life books is said that St. Germain was Joseph the foster-father of Jesus, Merlin the magician of King Arthur's Court, Roger Bacon, Christian Rosenkreuz of Germany, Christopher Columbus, Francis Bacon and Prince Rakoczy of Transylvania, in previous reincarnations. These beliefs about his previous incarnations are also promulgated by the Church Universal and Triumphant, with the addition that he was also incarnated as the ancient Jewish Prophet Samuel, as Saint Alban, and as a high priest of the white magicians in Atlantis. Guy Ballard claimed his book The Magic Presence was channeled to him from St. Germain (The official I Am edition of The Magic Presence, regarded as a sacred scripture, is printed in a violet colored typeface on lavender paper.).
According to Elizabeth Clare Prophet, St. Germain ascended on May 1st 1684. Although Sir Francis Bacon is said to have died in 1626, Prophet claims that the body in the coffin at Sir Francis Bacon's funeral was not his own and that he attended his own funeral. Supposedly, he continued living until his ascension in 1684. Thus, according to Prophet, the historical St. Germain was already an ascended master.In the Church Universal and Triumphant St Germain is regarded as a deity outranked only in importance by Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha, and Sanat Kumara (the “Lord of the World”), and in that church, he is the deity towards whom the most intense devotion is given. Guy Ballard, the founder of I Am, originated the meditation practice of invoking the “Violet Flame” from St. Germain in order to contact one's “I Am Presence” and revivify one's etheric body. This practice has been continued by the Church Universal and Triumphant.
Conspiracy theorists who believe in NESARA, a purported secret law that the US government denies the existence of (such as controversial evangelist Sherry Shriner), believe that St. Germain is still alive and is actively working with Jesus Christ and with benevolent space aliens to get the law enacted.